Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
It is one of the most baffling mysteries and indisputably one of the most horrific set of crimes in British detective police work to have ever been committed. Every corner of the Earth, from all walks of life, the foul and craven murder spree of Jack the Ripper is known, researched and poured over by amateur detectives, hunters of the truth, the rank and file and the ghoulish alike.
Whitechapel is a thriving, historic and in many parts a truly magnificent place to walk round but its dark heart, the criminal element that flocked to the streets and back alleys around the twin veins of Commercial and Whitechapel Roads, the tales of despair and depravity is what has marked it out for all time as being a source of intrigue, newspaper column inches and perhaps an unfathomable amount of books, both factual and inspired works of fiction, make it even to this day the most infamous part of London and the U.K.
Another year, another theory on the identity of Jack the Ripper comes crashing down onto the table tops and book shelves of Britain’s amateur detectives. However, even if you disagree with Russell Edward’s findings and research methods, his 300 odd page book, Naming Jack the Ripper is perhaps the most singular most edifying and detailed reveal of a possible suspect and puts many of the other works to shame.
The reader, the armchair detective is named so because they do not actually do the leg work that is required. Many Ripperologists have at least trodden the walkways, slumped against a side wall in Brick Lane tired, hungry and desperate for at least the smallest nugget of new information in which to place a new angle upon or to further enhance their own weary theories of just who could have committed the foulest of all acts and in such a frenzied and depraved way.
Russell Edwards might seem the most unlikely of all of possible solvers of the crime that shocked a nation to its core and had women in the East-End of London wondering if their husbands, sons or lovers could be the man terrorising the population. In a world in which many experts have painstakingly gone over every piece of evidence possible, it is in the mind of a self-made businessman to whom the answer seems to have supplied its self to.
The one great success of the book is how it has managed, easily more than almost every other account and report, to humanise the victims that were savagely taken. Research is one thing, it gives the bare facts but this is more than research, this borders on wanting the reader to empathise, rather than sympathise, with those who lost their lives in a three month period in Whitechapel. The detail of the women’s lives is more interesting, the way he describes their lives more fulsome and more memorable and is on a par with the scientific background in which he employs from Liverpool’s John Moore’s University.
Armed with a shawl he bought at auction, Russell Edwards manages to get crucial D.N.A. from the item of clothing and so begins the hunt yet again for Jack the Ripper.
Where science might be sterile, the way Russell Edwards captures the process is appealing and a little part of the reader, no matter how much effort they have put into their own theories of the case that baffled Scotland Yard, Inspector Abberline and Detective Reid, wants Mr. Edwards to have finally solved the most perplexing of criminal mysteries.
Something deep down though keeps your own thoughts above Mr. Edwards, something in which the reliance of science process, not as perfect as many would have believe, is taken to task by more undisputed facts. The books and theories will grow ever larger, the weight of history will mean that the killer will never be allowed to finally lie down and die and be forgotten as pure evil should be, but for sheer magnetism and a worthy piece of literature that is well documented, Mr. Edward’s Naming Jack The Ripper is a cut above a lot of the other books on the subject.
Ian D. Hall